


Back to the Garden

by anactoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Community: spn-masquerade, Episode: s05e13 The Song Remains the Same, F/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 10:39:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6371524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: <i>They both want the same thing: Sam taken apart, cancelled, for the sake of averting the apocalypse. When Sam approaches Anna to see if she can really do what she says she can, there's a real connection. But they both know what has to be done.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Back to the Garden

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for a [prompt](http://spn-masquerade.livejournal.com/7665.html?thread=2527473#t2527473) at [spn_masquerade](http://spn-masquerade.livejournal.com/). Thanks, OP, for the wonderful prompt!

Anna’s in the darkened garage when the prayer finds her. It’s diffident, just a flicker at the edges of her consciousness. Something heavy in it, for all that.

_Anna. It’s, uh, it’s me. Sam._ A long pause. _Look. I know why you’re here, and I get it. Or anyway I think I do. And you don’t have to. I get why you think you do, but—_ Another pause. _There’s a church on the other side of town. St. Joseph’s. I’m stealing a car. I’ll meet you there._

That last part sounds a little steadier, and she pictures him straightening his shoulders, lifting his chin. Still brave without the demon blood to back it up.

She feels a faint pang in her chest, at that. An echo of human emotion. She grew up in this body, breathing in it, feeding it, changing with it, experiencing its pains and pleasures like a living woman. It’s hers in a way no other angel’s vessel really is. Even after everything Michael and his lackeys did to her, she’s never quite managed to sever the ties.

Still. This makes things simpler. She’ll do as Sam asks.

There’s an engine-rumble outside the garage, tires crunching on the gravel. She crouches over the body on the ground, presses her fingers to Woodson’s forehead, fixing him with a frown as his burned-out eyes rebuild themselves and he sputters back to consciousness.

“I was never here,” she tells him, and is gone.

 

* * *

 

 

Sam’s choice of rendezvous makes her raise an eyebrow, but she goes. She checks for banishing sigils, for the tart herbal smell of holy oil, and when she’s satisfied, she sits in the front pew. There’s a stained glass Crucifixion behind the altar, an ornate patchwork of scenes and patterns surrounding it. The streetlight hits the ground in diamonds of red and blue, the Cross falling at the bottom of the aisle. Upside-down, from where Anna’s sitting.

It’s quiet here. If she had more time, she’d be tempted to let a little of her essence seep out into the stones beneath her feet. Listen to the footsteps that have walked them echoing back through time. Sink down into the earth, speak with the roots of the trees, the little crawling creatures, the bones buried in the cemetery out back.

When she was small, and human, sitting in church, she thought she heard the voices of the dead. Her mother told her to hush; told her that the rest of the congregation would think she had the Devil in her.

The sound of the door opening pulls her from the memory. She stands, and finds Sam Winchester waiting at the other end of the church. A small part of her is surprised he doesn’t burst into flames. Instead, he raises his eyes and then lowers them again, a gesture with the quick, instinctive quality of old habit.

He meets her eyes, then. “I know why you’re here,” he tells her. “I know what you have to do.”

The light through the stained glass falls on him, painting him in colors of fire and ice. It occurs to her that he’s beautiful.

Well, each of the Winchesters is, in his own way. It’s not as if the brightest angels of Heaven would settle for less. But last time, she had eyes only for Dean, with his ready smile and his clever, gentle hands, the flash of humor ever-present in his eyes. A defense against the season. He was what she needed, then, she supposes. Seeking comfort in sensation and brief connection, like huddling round a fire with your back to the dark.

She isn’t the same now. She sees Sam facing the inevitable unarmed, with none of the demon-blood-born arrogance, just the sorrow of his heart shining in his eyes, and she thinks that if they had more time, she’d want to wrap her grace around him and promise him better. She shouldn’t want that, not for somebody who’s done what he has. She does.

Changing, _wanting_ , like this—it’s human. It isn’t a comfort, that some part of her still is.

Sam approaches her. His footsteps are loud in the silence.

“Dean and Cas think you’ve gone crazy,” he says. “Because of what—what they did to you.” He raises his eyes for a half-second, making it clear which _they_ he’s talking about. “Honestly, I think they might be right. But that doesn’t make you wrong.”

Anna should give him something, she thinks, in return for his honesty. She doesn’t quite manage a smile.

“Our brother’s wrong, you know,” she says. “It isn’t the mind that makes a Hell of Heaven.”

“No?” It’s almost tentative. He’s watching her face carefully—looking out for danger, some hunter instinct kicking in as though he didn’t come here to die.

“No. It’s just Heaven.” She looks at the floor, at the cross by her feet. “But then, Lucifer’s wrong about a lot of things.”

Sam hesitates. “Like bringing me back? I mean—you can make it so he can’t?” His voice trembles, just a little.

“Yes.” Anna looks up, moves closer, into his space. He doesn’t back away. “They’re both the same, you know,” she tells him. “Heaven and Hell. They’ll never give you peace.”

A muscle in Sam’s jaw tightens, but he nods. “I know. This is the only way.”

“I’m sorry.”

It sounds so inadequate. Before she can think about it too hard, she reaches up, brushes the hair back from his face. He doesn’t flinch from her touch, though she sees the impulse to do so flicker in his eyes. His cheek is warm under her palm.

“You know,” she says, “it’s true what they say. Part of it, anyway. Thermodynamics. What my Father created, nothing ever truly destroys. We’re all made of the same stuff as the stars, in the end.”

He huffs out a breath, gives her a pained smile. “Is that supposed to be comforting?”

Anna lets her hand drop. “I guess not.”

His eyes flutter closed, then. “Tell Dean—” he begins, then breaks off, shakes his head. “Don’t tell Dean anything. He won’t understand. Nor Cas.”

She snorts. “There are a lot of things Castiel doesn’t understand.”

Sam opens his eyes, bites his lip. “Listen,” he says. “Cas—he knows it was wrong. What he did to you. He wasn’t himself. I’m not saying, forgive him, but…”

“But you kind of are.”

It’s such a human thing to do, beg forgiveness on the part of somebody else when you can’t do it for yourself. Anna isn’t sure she can give it, but another impulse seizes her. Something she can give, hopelessly little though it is. She stands on the tips of her toes and presses her lips to Sam’s.

He blinks and goes still with surprise—but after a moment, he softens, doesn’t exactly kiss back, but lets it happen. It’s chaste, really, soft and too brief. He’s trembling a little when she pulls away.

“You’re a good man, Sam,” she says. “That’s what I’ll tell your brother.”

He doesn’t answer that; just closes his eyes and bows his head.

Anna touches her hand to his forehead. White light floods the empty church.

 

* * *

 

She crosses the universe in flashes quicker than heartbeats, scattering the star-stuff that was a good man.

She leaves atoms of him in the deeps of Earth’s oceans, from whence she saw life first crawl. In the heart of the Orion Nebula, where stars are born. The plains of Antarctica. The valleys and peaks of planets no human has yet given a name.

She can’t risk Lawrence. Too obvious; too much sentimental value to the Winchesters. Lucifer might think to look there.

Instead, she jumps forward in time; scatters a few atoms in the garden that grows from her abandoned grace.

She imagines that the flowers there turn toward them, like the sun.

 

* * *

 

The church is very quiet, now she’s alone again. She’s not sure how long passes before an engine sounds outside.

The door slams open. Vaguely, Anna sees the silhouettes of Dean and Mary Winchester, but they’re eclipsed by a towering brightness. From behind John Winchester’s eyes, the archangel Michael gazes at her. His sorrow is more terrible than anger.

“Sister,” he says. “What have you done?”

Her heart is very empty, but she smiles. She knows that she will die now.

“What a good man asked,” she says, and steps forward to meet him with open arms. Her palms shine not with blood, but with stardust.

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me on: [Tumblr](http://anactorya.tumblr.com) | [LJ](http://anactoria.livejournal.com)


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